A Louisiana Historical Marker honoring physicist and philanthropist Peter Putnam was placed this month near 3127 East Main Street in Houma, Louisiana. The marker was financed by attorney John J. Sullivan and the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana.
Peter Putnam (1927–1987) was a physicist, philosopher, and philanthropist whose quiet brilliance left a lasting impact in the realms of science, environmentalism, and LGBTQ+ rights. Born into wealth in Cleveland, he earned a Ph.D. in physics at Princeton. After graduating, he taught physics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Columbia University in. A reclusive thinker, he developed a radical theory of the mind – what he called a universal “general purpose heuristic” – that was praised by figures like John Archibald Wheeler, one of the most influential theoretical physicists of the 20th century.
Rejecting materialism, Putnam gave away his fortune to charity. The bulk of his $37 million dollar estate was left to the Nature Conservancy, who used much of those funds to preserv Louisiana’s Little Pecan Island.
Putnam had a lifelong interest in sculpture and commissioned various sculptures that still stand in various sites across the country. Most notably, in 1979, he funded the Gay Liberation Monument, a sculpture by George Segal that is now a centerpiece of the Stonewall Historic Site in New York City.
Later, he moved to Houma, Louisiana, working as a janitor while writing philosophical writings and supporting progressive causes. He died in a hit-and-run accident in 1987. He was survived by his partner of 17 years, John “Claude” DeBrew. Though little known during his lifetime, his intellectual legacy and quiet acts of generosity and philanthropy are finally being recognized.
